13 January 2016

"A filthy, corrupt enterprise."

This will be my last post on the subject of the Rams relocation. I realize this isn't on the radar of most readers, even in St. Louis. The reason for my indignation is the sheer fraud and injustice of the way the city was treated by the gang of monied thugs that is the ownership and leadership of the NFL.

The fact that there will be no repercussions to these persons in this world rankles-- but of course does not surprise.

The NFL’s cross-ownership rules that were ignored to
accommodate Kroenke, the first indication that the league executives would
shine his shoes when ordered to do so.

Meaningless:
the personal conduct of an NFL owner (Kroenke) in his market. Meaningless: the
hideous performance of the owner’s team in his market. Worthless: the concept
of holding an owner accountable. Meaningless and worthless: the NFL’s respect
for the relentless and remarkable effort by the St. Louis task force that
raised at least $400 million in public money to fund a new stadium for a
franchise and a league that didn’t appreciate it or deserve it.

Meaningful and Worth Everything:

Kroenke’s $7.7 billion fortune. Money wins. Every. Single.
Time. Goodell and Grubman’s muscle in shoving the LA committee out of the way
to get the desired outcome.Kroenke’s
willingness to build a $2 billion stadium-entertainment complex in Inglewood,
near Los Angeles. The NFL’s enthusiasm to embrace the project and endorse an
owner that the league doesn’t even like — all in the pursuit of a solution for
filling a void that Kroenkehimselfcreated by pulling the Rams out LA in 1995.
The NFL’s lust to reach the league’s annual revenue goal of $25 billion
annually — and nothing else mattered, including the unprecedented abandonment
of a market that raised nearly $1 billion in public dollars (combined) to fund
two new stadiums for the league in fewer than 25 years.

I’ll Never Really Understand:

[...]

— I’ll never understand why the NFL shamelessly encouraged
Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz and Gov. Jay Nixon to continue pressing to complete
the funding for the proposed north riverfront stadium when the league had
absolutely no intention of giving St. Louis a fair and honest process that
would keep the Rams here. If the cartel wanted to get Kroenke to LA, then be
done with it. The anti-STL fix was in; this was a competition that St. Louis
had no chance of winning. So why put the STL leadership through a charade, send
them through a maze of glasshouse mirrors, squander money that was used to
prepare the riverfront stadium site, and waste the time and energy of men of
many individuals that tried in earnest to satisfy the league’s directive for
preserving NFL football in St. Louis?

— I’ll never understand why Kroenke and his attorney Alan
Bornstein felt such a feverish desire and to napalm the city with a vicious
attack in the Rams’ official relocation application that contained outright
lies, half-truths, misinformation, and gratuitous condemnation of a struggling
but proud town that valiantly tried to come through with a first-class stadium?
Why couldn’t Kroenke and Bornstein calmly and professionally make the case for
moving without nuking the place on the way out? The NFL had already rigged this
process to end happily Kroenke, so why drop bombs?

[...]

— I don’t understand (OK, actually I do) why Goodell throw a
tantrum when league finance chairman Bob McNair pledged an extra $100 million
of league money for the STL stadium project in exchange for a ticket-tax
abatement for the team? Goodell made it clear the $100 million contribution
wasn’t going to happen for St. Louis…
only to turn around Tuesday and give the Chargers and Raiders $100 million
apiece for potential stadium solutions in their current markets. The hypocrisy
— even by NFL standards — was appalling.

[...]

Indeed, this is real Malice in Wonderland stuff: hammer the
city that did everything to deliver the money — and generously reward the two
markets that did nothing. The Chargers and/or Raiders may ultimately move, but
at least for now San Diego and Oakland have a chance to keep their teams, and
the NFL tossed them a $100 million gift to try and make it happen. St. Louis,
and that $400 million? GET OUT. The moral of the story: try to do everything
right and lose your team; do everything wrong and keep your team. The winner is
the man with the most money. What a filthy, corrupt enterprise.

A Day That Will Live in Glory

Pray for the Four Cardinals: Burke, Caffarra, Meiser and Brandmuller

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day."